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Our Vision of a Sun Dried Future

By nthogen, 07/31/2016 - 18:36

on the night of 11/11/11 I was in a near death car accident, dunno why I was saved, after months of depression, survivors guilt, general low mood, my wonderful wife Shannon asked me,

"what would you do if everything, all the bills were taken care of and you had everything you wanted and needed. what would you spend your days doing?"

that's the moment I looked around and saw all my records and flight cases again, sitting around collecting dust. I remembered about music, I remember that time Gus and I got flown out in a 6 seater to nantucket to DJ this crazy party with the Jager girls, I remembered beats make me happy. After that, as a discipline, I posted a mix here on mixcrate once a month for 2 years, it's one of the major reasons why I am the happy father I am today. After that streak, the mixes became more sporadic, life just got more busy, I wanted what I posted to be from the heart, not just coz it was the end of the month...

Now it seems things are heating up, thanks to the help of my great friend Joshua Zarza and support from so many other enthusiastic house heads and music lovers, I'm proud to announce that we have solidified our mission here at Sun Dried Beats.

It's in the name bro...

Our goal is to build an entirely solar powered mobile sound system and stage, with all the fancy lights and everything. Imagine a tractor trailer that can pull up somewhere, unfold into an almost lotus like shape, and within a few hours there's a party until the power runs out.

It's not just a mission to party and have fun, it's a mission to actually leave no trace. It won't be easy, and currently our budget is tight, but Zarza has a small scale prototype almost show-ready that can feasibly power a backyard banging system for about 60-90 mins. I fucking love that guy, met him when I opened up for the District 7 party way back in 2012, he was one of the first to embrace the idea of sun dried beats, and I'm happy to announce that we're going full LCC as partners on this project. Sun Dried Beats strives to become a vinyl only record label (with download links for digi, sigh...) that finds and brings up fresh underground talent, in both Detroit and San Diego, and research, execute, and promote solar energy, and the technology behind getting the most out of it. Personally, I am excited, maybe it was just that last dab :P

Someone asked me the other day, "When are you going to patent it?" and I responded why? "What if someone takes the idea and starts using it?" and I'm like, uh that would be awesome... We're soon going to have a forum here on our website for all the things we've figured out and we plan to open source the knowledge we've been building and pretty much what we know. We believe solar is for everyone, and I think if we put our heads together we can figure out some cool shit, and what better incentive than building something to bring people together around music. I mean, the sun is right over there people, it's the biggest fire around here, let's use figure out how to use it and have fun, get the most out of life, and eat tacos.

OK I've rambled on long enough... I spent most of the afternoon yesterday setting up more toys in my living room, and by about 2am I was feeling inspired to throw down a mix. I usually don't post things that aren't as perfect as I can get them, but this mix even though it has some issues, has some moments that turned out well. I'll probably rerecord and release it officially in a few weeks so you'll have to wait on track lists, but it captured some of the good I've been feeling lately.. I know it's way effects heavy but whatever, that's what practice sessions are all about, used the XDJ1000s, Maschine Effects thru the SFX send/receive on my XONE:42 mixer, and some vinyl....